reSee.it - Tweets Saved By @MikeNayna

Posted - November 1, 2023 at 1:21 AM

Saved - July 1, 2025 at 11:05 AM

reSee.it AI Summary

I explore the unifying ideology behind the amorphous leftish coalition, which is tied to Woke Identitarianism and its concept of Intersectionality. This ideology simplifies complex political narratives into dogmatic beliefs, claiming that various identity groups face systemic oppression. Kenneth Minogue's analysis reveals that ideologies often depict society as governed by hidden oppressors. Woke ideology uniquely adapts to multiple identities, reducing our rich cultural heritage to a simplistic systemic critique. A civilization is more than an ideology; it is a complex ecology of meaning.

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

What explains this amorphous leftish coalition? It's not random - a particular ideological understanding of the world unites these issues. THREAD https://t.co/kktmouN7XZ

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

These seemingly different interest groups are held together by Woke Identitarian ideology, which has a grand unifying theory of oppression called "Intersectionality". Here's an explainer montage I cobbled together from different NGO resources. 2/n https://t.co/E94zN5c4hP

Video Transcript AI Summary

Intersectionality refers to the reality that we all have multiple identities that intersect to make us who we are. It gives us a way to talk about oppressions and privileges that overlap and reinforce each other. Intersectional theory is applied across social divisions and understandings of domination, such as whiteness, masculinity, and heterosexuality. Racism, sexism, and ableism exist on their own, but when combined they compound and transform the experience of oppression. Intersectionality acknowledges that unique oppressions exist, but is also dedicated to understanding how they change in combination. Different types of discrimination result in varying forms of advantage and disadvantage. Black Lives Matter is an example of a movement with an intersectional philosophy, fighting for folks on the margins, including Black LGBTQ, women, fem, trans, and disabled people. Discrimination and social inequalities are a system and the fundament of our economies, political, and cultural systems.

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Speaker 0: Intersectionality. Have you heard this word before? Even if you have, you might not know what it means. Let's take a look at it. The first part's easy enough. Intersection, a place where things come together. Intersectionality refers to the reality that we all have multiple identities that intersect to make us who we are. It also gives us a way to talk about oppressions and privileges that overlap and reinforce each other. Over the last thirty years, scholars, educators, and activists have expanded intersectionality. Speaker 1: Intersectional theory is now applied across a range of social divisions and also to understandings of domination, such as those associated with whiteness, masculinity, and heterosexuality. Racism, sexism and ableism exist on their own, but when combined they compound and transform the experience of oppression. Intersectionality acknowledges that unique oppressions exist, but is also dedicated to understanding how they change in combination. Speaker 0: Together, these different types of discrimination result in varying forms of advantage and disadvantage. Racism, ageism, and other isms can also unite people to bring about social change. Speaker 2: Intersectionality is a uniting framework. When we expand our understanding of black reality to include the way the patriarchy, homophobia, class shapes our reality so we can better transform it, it means that we have connections with other movements and other people. Speaker 3: I'll give one example on this. So the Black Lives Matter movement. What was unique about this particular movement was the intersectional philosophy that was built upon. The folks getting up and saying, we are not just fighting for one narrative, but we are specifically fighting for folks who are on the margins. We are fighting for black folks who are also LGBTQ, who are women, who are fem, who are trans, who are disabled. They named it. They saw, like, their people across the country and said, I'm fighting for Speaker 2: all of it. So Speaker 4: instead of thinking about discrimination as something that happens to some people that is done by some people, we want to see discrimination and social inequalities as a system, as the fundament of our economies, of our political systems, of our cultural systems as well. Bringing this shift in people means spreading the message. It means speaking to as many people as possible, sharing this vision, explaining what oppression is, what those systems are, and how they materialize in our lives. Holding our oppressive world together is a lot of work and we don't notice it. We don't notice that every day, all of us are working to uphold this system. And once we realize we don't have to do that, we don't have to uphold we don't have to work towards it, then it's it's a big relief. Speaker 3: Oh my god. I believe in equal rights. Oh my god. I believe that. I believe in it. Homophobia shouldn't

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

Like many words in the Internet era, the term "ideology" has gotten flabby. It’s commonly used to describe any collection of political ideas at all but this bloated definition deprives us of an important tool for pointing out a particularly destructive form of thinking. 3/n

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

In its narrow sense, an ideology is a set of political stories a group of people tell to facilitate mass action. They're quasi-religious oversimplifications of reality that possess dogmatic believers to interpret themselves & the world around them through a fixed schema. 4/n https://t.co/e5I6ewHj6F

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

In his book Alien Powers, Kenneth Minogue studied a range of different ideologies in an attempt to identify their consistent features. He saw them as part philosophy, part science, & part spiritual revelation that offers believers a sense of purpose in overcoming oppression. 5/n

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

He found similar patterns of ideological thought in Communism, Nazism, certain feminisms, & even strains of libertarianism. They all proposed that people were governed by hidden systems of oppression, they just had different ideas about who the oppressors were. 6/n https://t.co/pJmon8uKQb

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

Each ideology studied a particular class of people & claimed they were living in a false consciousness that served the interests of another class. The task of the ideologue was to liberate the oppressed population by educating them about the yet-to-be-seen tyranny. 7/n

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

Minogue called these educators 'Custodians of Ideological Consciousness' & they're an unmistakable feature of the Woke movement, which found its early success in developing teaching methods & adapting educational institutions to their consciousness-raising effort. @SRCHicks 8/n

Video Transcript AI Summary

Postmodern pedagogy aims to alter consciousness and create new subjectivities, requiring a new society, discourse, and institutions. This involves dismantling liberal education by undercutting its elements piece by piece and replacing it with a postmodern system. Some view this as sabotaging Western civilization's navigation system. Some educators see teaching as a political act, integrating social justice, multiculturalism, and culturally relevant teaching into learning. Students are being empowered to be activists, even at a young age. Educational programs are applying critical theory to practice, studying isms like classism, sexism, and racism through critical race theory, queer theory, and feminist theory. Some teachers intentionally infuse issues of race, culture, and class into their subject matter, even teaching topics like anti-racism, protesting, and Black Lives Matter outside the standard curriculum. In Oregon, high school students will not need to show proficiency in reading, writing, or math, because the policy disproportionately harmed students of color. The National Education Association aims to mobilize and create a new reality for students.

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Speaker 0: Once I got the Hooks project, there was a an observation that of how much of this this revolutionary postmodern stuff is in pedagogy, which is just a fancy word for the theory of education, I guess, the philosophy of education. Speaker 1: I worked with Paolo Freddy for about fifteen years. We did the almost impossible. We started a series in education and cultural studies through which we get about a 100 people tenure. And we saw that as an important kind of political intervention. We need a more comprehensive politics that links these things in ways that will be able to mobilize people into larger social formations. And we need to imagine not just simply reforming a society that's broken. We need to imagine eliminating it. We need a new kind of society. We need a new discourse. We need a new set of institutions. And maybe the place to begin to do that is to take seriously what it means to take education seriously, what it means to take pedagogy seriously, what it means to recognize that we're not just altering knowledge, we're altering consciousness, and we're creating new kinds of subjectivities. Speaker 2: They're well aware of what liberal education is all about. You know, it says professors are supposed to present both sides or all sides of an argument, particularly on the controversial issues, and that they, you know, they should have faculty who are diverse in their outlooks so that students get exposed to all of the viewpoints and that ultimately you're not trying to indoctrinate students. You might have things that you profess as a professor, but only once the student is up to speed on what the issues are and what the arguments are, then you jump in. But and in the final analysis, you leave it up to the students to make up their own minds, and you respect those students who make good arguments for positions that you disagree with. So the postmoderns are very well aware of that entire liberal philosophy, modern enlightenment, and the education system. And so in people like Freire and Giroux and Bell Hooks and the others, they are explicitly piece by piece going through all elements of that, undercutting them, and then asking what is going to be the postmodern replacement for that, and you end up with a an opposite kind of education system. Speaker 0: This this looks to me like it's if you're in the cock control room of Western civilization, you're just pulling out the wires on the navigation system. Speaker 3: I see teaching as a very political act. Stop. When we are engaging with our students, whether it's on social justice issues or multicultural issues or culturally relevant teaching. I see that as foundational to all learning. Speaker 4: We have all of these different people that are activists. We have, gay people. We have transgender people, and we have people that are taking action. And we're learning how to take action in social studies now. Speaker 5: We've seen our students become empowered. We've seen them see that even at the age of four that they can take an active role and be activists. Speaker 6: My master's is educational leadership, and the program I studied was called learning culture and society. I basically studied isms, classism, sexism, racism. I'm basically applying critical theory to educational practice as critical pedagogy. I looked at, like, critical race theory, queer theory, feminist theory. Speaker 7: It goes back to the curriculum, what you're talking about in the class and how to infuse issues around race and culture and class, into the subject matter. And as a science teacher, I have to do that intentionally. Speaker 8: I'm teaching children social studies that's not in our curriculum, teaching them things about how to be an anti racist. I taught them about protesting. I taught them about black lives matter. Speaker 4: For the Speaker 9: next five years, high school students in Oregon will not need to perform proficiency tests showing mastery of reading, writing, or math. The Oregon Department of Education tells me this policy simply didn't work and disproportionately harmed of color. Speaker 10: We, the members of the National Education Association of the United States of America, are the voice of education professionals. We are the NEA. Do you hear me? We are the NEA. We stand in the gap for our students, and we lift them up. We show up on the front lines organizing and rallying, rising up, and resisting. We will stand in our power. Imagine what's possible, and then we, NEA, will make it so. Onward, NEA. Onward.

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

The term “Woke” itself was coined by its true believers and it refers to the feeling of awakening from false consciousness to see the hidden systems of oppression they believe govern the world. 9/n

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

What differentiates Woke Identitarian ideology from its predecessors is the fluidity of its oppressed class. They have tenaciously adapted the core doctrines of "systemic oppression" to many different identity groups. 10/n https://t.co/dKhm6nV2yC

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

Ideologies of the past worked on behalf of a single, cumbersome block of people - the workers (communism), the Aryan race (Nazism), the female sex (radical feminism), but Woke equips many classes with sub ideologies & unifies them with Intersectionality. 11/n

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

Anywhere a social grievance can be found, an academic franchise can be built using core "systemic" doctrines - Black people are oppressed by whites through systemic racism, women by men under systemic sexism, gays by straights under heteronormativity... 12/n

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

... trans people by gender conformists under cisnormativity, disabled by the abled under ableism, fats by thins under thin privilege, all the way down to left-handers being oppressed under the brutal reign of right supremacy. 13/n https://t.co/C6nJPqGbSQ

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

One consistent feature of ideology that Kenneth Minogue identified, was that they claim the social order they seek to depose is itself an ideology. Take this description of Cisgenderism for example, where "cisgender" just means someone who isn’t trans. 14/n https://t.co/uk7K75GNfD

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

They claim those who are comfortable with their biological sex, & value their normative identity more than trans identities, which is most people, have been inculcated into a systemic ideology. The only way to escape this ideology is to adopt Woke ideology & work on its behalf. 15/n

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

Each "system of inequality" can be loosely described as normal patterns of behaviour & thought. They trace all social inequality to the fact that most people do similar things & there are expectations, laws, & institutional practices built around this reality. 16/n

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

The bell curves of social behaviour are seen to inherently oppress the outliers, & "equity" is the social engineering enterprise of flattening out norms so that new ways of living can be discovered & practised unencumbered by the oppressive gaze of cultural values. 17/n

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

So then, who is in the grip of an ideology and who is in touch with reality? 18/n https://t.co/10Cl6ND2jy

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

I’ve come to realise the foil for Woke ideology is a simplistic reduction of our Western cultural heritage. Through relentless ideological critique, they’ve managed to reduce our diverse legacy of customs, beliefs, political procedures, & ethics to a “systemic ideology”. 19/n

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

A civilisation is neither a system nor an ideology. It’s an evolved ecology of meaning & practice that can’t be dismantled & rearranged at will to produce desired outcomes. This reductive, mechanistic conception of culture is Woke’s biggest tell. 20/n

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

I've written more about this here - michaelnayna.com/p/the-rainbow-… . 21/21 https://t.co/TSSOlB3JX7

@MikeNayna — Michael Nayna

Posted - December 12, 2023 at 3:29 AM

Saved - December 12, 2023 at 1:04 PM

reSee.it AI Summary

Recent congressional hearings in the US have shed light on the ideology problem in higher education. Critical Theory (CT), the foundation of DEI administrations and student activism, diverges from scientific theory by prioritizing moral ends over verifiable predictions. CTs like Critical Race Theory aim to dismantle societal norms and practices they perceive as oppressive. The influence of these theories has changed the purpose of universities. Conservative academics face hostility, while three camps emerge: classical liberals advocating for truth, progressive activists seeking to convert institutions, and conservative postliberals advocating for religious grounding. The implications for society and culture are significant.

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

Recent congressional hearings in the US have created a broader willingness to look at higher eds ideology problem. University leadership has reached an inflection point that I’ll try to explain here in simple terms. THREAD https://t.co/f8wMJT936w

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

I’ll start by drawing a comparison between a scientific theory & a Critical Theory (CT), which is the theoretical work that underlies DEI administrations, most student activism, & the disingenuous testimony we heard at the hearings. 2/n

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

A scientific theory emerges from the observation of facts. It’s a kind of story we tell about why certain groupings of facts show up the way they do. 3/n

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

There’s an expectation among scientists that if you familiarise yourself with a theory, you should be able to use its principles to predict something new & verifiable about the world. 4/n https://t.co/be0LeIXlHC

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

A CT, however, doesn’t hold itself to this expectation. Critical theorists claim that social science must integrate philosophy into its methods so that findings work practically toward a moral end. 5/n

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

Where the purpose of a scientific theory is to understand the world as it is, the purpose of a CT is to change the world into something it ought to be. These theories are active in nature & designed to create change. 6/n https://t.co/39xyaPcQkL

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

Critical Race Theory, Postcolonial Theory, & Queer Theory, among others, are large bodies of work devoted to criticising Western society. They seek to dissolve the social expectations, laws, & institutional practices they claim oppress outsider identity groups. 7/n

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

While some scholars working with CTs use the theoretical frameworks as starting points to do real research, the standards of the field have devolved so badly that a fundamentalism has emerged from their vast body of work. 8/n

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

They critique everything, from the way people form couples, to how buildings are designed. Their bottomless body of criticism is now decades old & is so influential that it has changed how the university views its purpose. 9/n https://t.co/I6AF0cmg42

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

The critical canon is taught to students before they’re given a chance to adequately understand the object of their ire & many imbibe so much of the abstract theoretical philosophy that it forms the basis of their relationship to reality. 10/n

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

These critical agents of change move from department to department applying their theory to any discipline they can convert to the cause. 11/n https://t.co/Q2BeVhjg5Z

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

Differing from scientific practitioners who attempt to disprove their starting assumptions, they begin with their conclusions & move into the field to accumulate proof & punish dissent. 12/n https://t.co/ffljclMgsK

Video Transcript AI Summary

Racism is a complex system that exists in both traditional and modern forms. It is a multilayered, institutionalized system that distributes unequal power and resources between white people and people of color. All members of society are socialized to participate in this system, regardless of their intentions. To not act against racism is to support it. The focus should not be on whether racism occurred, but rather on how it manifested in a given situation. The racial status quo is comfortable for most white people, so anything that maintains their comfort should be questioned. Those who experience racial oppression have a deeper understanding of the system, but white professors are often seen as more legitimate. Resistance to anti-racist education is expected and should be addressed strategically.

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Speaker 0: Racism exists today in both traditional and modern forms. Racism is an institutionalized, multilayered, multilevel system that distributes unequal power and resources between white people and people of color as socially identified, and disproportionately benefits whites. All members of society are socialized to participate in the system of racism, albeit within varied social locations. All white people benefit from racism, regardless of intentions. No one chose to be socialized into racism, so no one is quote unquote bad, but no one is neutral. To not act against racism is to support racism. Racism must be continually identified, analyzed, and challenged. No one has ever done. The question is not Did racism take place? But rather, how did racism manifest in that situation? The racial status quo is comfortable for most whites. Therefore, anything that maintains white comfort is suspect. The racially oppressed have a more intimate insight via experiential knowledge of the system of based than their racial impressors. However, white professors will be seen as having more legitimacy, thus positionality must be intentionally engaged. Resistance is a predictable reaction to anti racist education, and must be explicitly and strategically addressed.

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

There are many different CTs but they all follow base assumtions that bring them together into a single orthodoxy. https://x.com/MikeNayna/status/1719525047285744037?s=20 13/n https://t.co/NaM4l3MJZS

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

What explains this amorphous leftish coalition? It's not random - a particular ideological understanding of the world unites these issues. THREAD https://t.co/kktmouN7XZ

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

DEI administrators work tacitly with student activists to create an inhospitable environment for conservative academics who seek to defend & transmit the very norms the orthodoxy seeks to dissolve. 14/n https://t.co/3g2OPwoKaM

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

Conservatives have already lost the battle against the agents of change & pressure is increasingly applied to classical liberals who advocate for free speech & institutional neutrality. @peterboghossian 15/n https://t.co/Z2GTUTZTO4

Video Transcript AI Summary

The speaker expresses frustration over a hit piece published by Portland State University, criticizing their ideas and linking them to Trump. They highlight the shift from questioning knowledge to now labeling individuals advocating certain positions as morally wrong. The speaker also discusses the problem of asking questions in academic spaces, where challenging established beliefs is discouraged. They argue that these ideas, promoted by tenured professors, are disconnected from reality.

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Speaker 0: I get into work today, and I see the Portland State University paper has apparently done a hit piece on me. There it is. The goal in the contemporary bullying style of Trump as politics is to ridicule others for personal gain. P S U Proeducational Clinic. These people are look at that. They're What a mess. We have opted to communicate our concerns through a collective identity rather than individually. I mean, it just it is utterly incredible told me what the university has become when you have to publish an anonymous hit piece on people. So that's what it is. You can't they they can't defend their ideas. They link me with Trump. They attack me as a person. How do I talk to a collective? How do I talk to the PSU proeducational editorial collective? I I can't. Speaker 1: So before, it was a question of knowledge. Speaker 0: Mhmm. Speaker 1: In in fancy, would you call it epistemology? You didn't have the right knowledge. You had a wrong epistemology. But now, it's something very different. It's now as someone who advocates a particular position is a bad person. Right. Right. So it's not just that you're missing a fact. It's that there's something wrong you morally. Mhmm. But it's even worse than that. Because even asking a question in the academy in in Many spaces becomes a problem. Yeah. Speaker 0: You Speaker 1: know, why are you asking a question about trigger warnings or safe spaces or microaggression? Why are you challenging this? We know this to be true. Well, how do you know it to be true? Well, here it is in the research literature. Yeah. It's So that's how the whole thing becomes ingrained and embedded. Mhmm. And then people get tenure, and they go on to teach, and they go on to promote these ideas. But the ideas themselves are totally untethered to reality.

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

In 2016, social psychologist @JonHaidt warned of a leadership schism, arguing that universities needed to decide & state openly their intent to be guided by the critical tradition ("change") or the liberal one ("truth") 16/n https://t.co/KGTRgdDYfM

Video Transcript AI Summary

The speaker discusses two contrasting views of universities. The first view, based on John Stuart Mill's principles, emphasizes diversity of opinions and encourages debate to find truth. The second view, influenced by Karl Marx, focuses on changing the world and prioritizes social justice. The speaker argues that universities cannot pursue both views and suggests a schism, where universities explicitly choose either truth or social justice as their central mission. Brown University represents the social justice approach, while the University of Chicago opposes safe spaces in classrooms. The speaker proposes having schools for those who do not align with the far right or far left. The audience at Duke University leans towards the pursuit of truth. The speaker concludes that committing to truth is essential for achieving justice.

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Speaker 0: I'm going to show you 2 different ways of looking at a university. I'm gonna open with 2 quotations from dead white men writing in London in the 1840s. So a very very narrow range of human thought here, but extraordinarily far apart and what they said is resonating and playing out today. So John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. Think of a university based on Millian or Mill's principles and it's gonna clearly be one that strives to represent diverse views. It's going to reach out for viewpoint diversity and encourage a culture of debate and challenge. And only in that way can we find truth together. On the other hand, Karl Marx writing, the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it. And so if we imagine a university based on a more Marxist approach to intellectual life, it's gonna look extremely different. When I arrived at Yale in 1981, this is what it said over the gate, over the main gate to the old campus, lux et veritas. It's written right there in stone, veritas, truth. I was inducted into an institution with a long sense of tradition going back clearly to the medieval universities like Oxford and Cambridge and going back all the way to Plato's academy 25 100 years before. It was really thrilling to feel that I was joining a fraternity especially as a philosophy major. You really feel that link back to the academy and the debates and the symposium and the ways that these early philosophers would argue and in that way improve each other's thinking. But beginning in the 19 nineties I believe, universities began to change. What was written over their doorway began to change. And I think they began to adopt change itself as more of the motto, the mantra. And not just any change, not just change for the sake of change, but social justice particularly. Social justice becomes much more important in the life of universities, I believe in the 19 nineties. First of course from the various studies departments, the gender studies, race studies, all the different ethnic studies departments and areas but then also the humanities more broadly. So in my talk, I'm gonna argue that no university can pursue both. Individuals can in their own lives but a university needs to have a central mission. And it has to be either truth or social justice. It can't be both. And so I'm gonna argue that we need a schism. We need our universities to clearly declare which way you're going. You can go either way, it's free country but you gotta go one way or the other and you have to be explicit about it, advertise that and then students can choose which kind of university to go to. Fortunately the schism is underway. Brown University has volunteered to lead it. Christina Paxson wrote to the faculty saying that Brown is a bedrock commitment to social justice. The faculty wrote back in the newspaper. We applaud the call to unite around a university agenda of social justice. Unite around it. Circle around our sacred value. That's what holds us together. So Brown, we just found out last week, the left right ratio in the humanities and social sciences is 60 to 1. It is the most left leaning school of the major in the country. 60 to 1 left right ratio at Brown. So Brown, fine, let them do it. They're gonna spend $100,000,000 on diversity and inclusion. That's their choice. It's their money, it's their donors money, whatever. They're gonna spend a lot of money on diversity inclusion, so they're going that way. Chicago has declared the opposite. So the University of Chicago sent a rather clumsily worded letter. It's foolish for them to say we don't allow safe spaces, there's a right of association. But what the dean of students meant was classrooms at Chicago are not safe spaces. That's what he was trying to say. So they're gonna lead the schism and I think what I'm calling for is not actually very radical because it's already happened. So these schools, they used to be divinity schools. And we still have schools that devote themselves to Jesus Christ, So here's Wheaton College and they say right there on the website, for Christ and his kingdom. That's their telos. If you go to that school, our mission is to serve Jesus Christ. Now you'll take English courses and history courses of course, but they're clear. Our Talos is to serve Jesus Christ. So we've already had a schism where some schools, they were all Christian schools originally, some went to Christ, some went towards truth. We've already had that schism, all I'm saying is let's have one more. We need 1 more. We already have a place for people on the religious right, they can go there. People on the far left, social justice left, they can go to Brown. But shouldn't we have some schools for people who are not on the far right or far left? And so that's my question for you for Duke. Well I guess I have a hint at which way you're gonna vote already, but which way do you wanna go? Raise your hand if you think Duke's Talos should be serving Jesus Christ. Raise your hand. Okay, we actually have 4. Okay. Raise your hand if you think that the Duke's Talos should be social justice. Raise your hand high. 1. Okay. And raise your hand if you think it should be truth. Alright. Okay, well, So in conclusion, there are 2 very different ways of thinking about intellectual life that go back a 150, 200 years. They've led to 2 very different ways of thinking about universities and I'm thrilled that you have all identified or most of you have identified with John Stuart Mills view in which the point of university is to understand the world because only if you commit to truth I believe Can you actually achieve justice? Thank you.

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

Three camps appear to be emerging from the crisis. The classical liberals, who call for a return to neutral leadership & a truth-seeking mission. https://x.com/McCormickProf/status/1733606029814853830?s=20 17/n

@McCormickProf - Robert P. George

It is CRITICAL that we derive the right message--and avoid deriving the wrong one--from Liz Magill's "voluntary" resignation. The wrong one is that universities like Penn need more restrictions of speech. The right one is that double standards will no longer be tolerated.

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

The priestesses, who would like to continue to convert academic institutions into progressive cathedrals. https://x.com/CBradleyThomps1/status/1733529080828502141?s=20 18/n

@CBradleyThomps1 - C. Bradley Thompson

🚨🚨🚨 Exclusive to @RepStefanik, @EliseStefanik, @elonmusk, @BillAckman, @realchrisrufo, @realChrisBrunet, @MZHemingway, @mtaibbi. I have received from inside Harvard sources a smoking gun August 20, 2020 memo from Claudine Gay (now Harvard President) to the Faculty of Arts & Sciences when she was Dean. It flies in the face of everything she said to @RepStefanik & the world last week. This memo was written when she was a short-listed candidate for the Harvard presidency. We must face a stunning possibility: Gay got the the job precisely because she holds these views. This memo not only exposes her hypocrisy & duplicity but also the real source of what makes her (and those like her) the most destructive force in American higher education. This memo is a blueprint for the intellectual corruption & politicization of a once great institution, and it laid the groundwork for the anti-semitism & the anti-Americanism rampant at Harvard today. This is Gay's agenda for Harvard, which means for the rest of American higher education. Gay obviously should be fired, but that's not enough. Her ideological agenda must be opposed and tossed in the dustbin of history. Please read & REPOST. Dear members of the FAS community, As we look ahead to the start of a fall semester unlike any other, we confront the realization that we are now living history in the making. This moment has been shaped by crises old and new, as one pandemic has collided with another. The COVID-19 pandemic is a truly singular event; a public health threat that has spared no part of our academic enterprise from disruption, forcing us to reimagine everything from undergraduate residential life to the daily activities of our labs and libraries. Meanwhile, a second pandemic is unfolding, one with deeper roots in American life. People across the world have risen up in protest against police brutality and systemic racism, awake to the devastating legacies of slavery and white supremacy like never before. The calls for racial justice heard on our streets also echo on our campus, as we reckon with our individual and institutional shortcomings and with our Faculty’s shared responsibility to bring truth to bear on the pernicious effects of structural inequality. Even as our opportunities to be together on campus are limited, now is the time to reengage and reconnect, both with each other and with the promise of our mission to advance knowledge and discovery in service of a more just world. This moment offers a profound opportunity for institutional change that should not and cannot be squandered. The national conversation around racial equity continues to gain momentum and the unprecedented scale of mobilization and demand for justice gives me hope. In raw, candid conversations and virtual gatherings convened across the FAS in the aftermath of George Floyd’s brutal murder, members of our community spoke forcefully and with searing clarity about the institution we aspire to be and the lengths we still must travel to be the Harvard of our ideals. It is up to us to ensure that the pain expressed, problems identified, and solutions suggested set us on a path for long-term change. I write today to share my personal commitment to this transformational project and the first steps the FAS will take to advance this important agenda in the coming year. Amplify teaching and research on racial and ethnic inequality The project of building a truly inclusive scholarly community begins with what we consider worthy of research and teaching. A full account of contemporary American society demands scholarship that affirms the relevance, significance, and worth of diverse cultural backgrounds and histories. Moreover, preparing our students for leadership in today’s globalized yet profoundly unequal society, requires an education that includes the voices, stories, and lived experiences of those too long pushed to the margins. With these goals in mind, I plan a series of investments across our academic enterprise. This fall, we will reactivate the cluster hire in ethnicity, indigeneity, and migration, with the goal of making four new faculty appointments. These appointments are critical to our long-term efforts to strengthen our research and teaching capacity, and ensure that our students have access to this vital body of knowledge. In order to accelerate our progress, however, I am also establishing the Harvard College Visiting Professorship in Ethnicity, Indigeneity, and Migration to recruit leading scholars of race and ethnicity to spend a year at Harvard College actively engaged in teaching our undergraduates. Beginning in 2021-2022, the FAS will appoint up to two new visiting scholars each year, based on recommendations from academic departments. Finally, to seed new research directions and develop the next generation of scholars, we will also invest in the academic pipeline. The Inequality in America postdoctoral fellowship program, which currently recruits two new fellows each year, will be expanded in the coming year to recruit two additional early career scholars whose work focuses specifically on issues of racial and ethnic inequality. Foster a more inclusive visual culture The FAS has a long and proud history of discovery and achievement that is worthy of celebration. But it also has painful chapters of its history, marred by exclusion and discrimination. To become the inclusive scholarly community we aspire to be, we must confront our dual legacies with honesty, humility, and resolve, including how they are visually represented in the spaces where we work, live, and learn. Our visual culture should reflect our deep, abiding commitments to advance knowledge and critical thinking, honoring our past in a truthful way, while also celebrating the diversity and vitality of our present and instilling a sense of pride and belonging that is equally available to all members of our community. Honest and rigorous conversation about how we weave together our past, present, and future is necessary to build the stronger, more equitable FAS we envision. This fall, I am launching the Task Force on Visual Culture and Signage to take up this consequential conversation. Led by Dean of Arts and Humanities, Robin Kelsey, this task force will convene a group of faculty, staff, and students from across the FAS to conduct a comprehensive study of our visual culture and articulate principles and informed guidelines for evolving the visual culture and imagery of the FAS. It is my hope that this work will provide a stronger foundation for the creative and meaningful action already happening at the local level, as well as catalyze new, more systematic visual change across the whole of the FAS. Build our capacity to pursue inclusive excellence Aligning our values with institutional action will bring us closer to the Harvard we aspire to be. But to make meaningful strides, our efforts cannot be ad hoc or lack accountability to a comprehensive strategy with concrete and measurable goals. What is required is focused, intentional action at every level of the FAS to dismantle the cultural and structural barriers that have precluded progress. And we must put real resources behind this work. Good intentions alone will not suffice. As a first step towards building our capacity for inclusive excellence, I soon will appoint the inaugural Associate Dean of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging for the FAS. Their work will be dedicated to the creation and implementation of an FAS-wide strategic vision for inclusive excellence that enables all members of our community to be seen, heard, and to flourish. They will report directly to me, and will work closely with the FAS senior leadership team to develop concrete goals and identify personal, departmental, divisional, and school-level actions for building an effective and active culture of anti-racism in the FAS. Expand leadership opportunities for staff of color Staff leaders of color remain significantly underrepresented in the FAS, and we are missing out on this talent to our own detriment. The benefits of diverse teams for organizational performance are well-documented, from spurring innovation and creative problem solving to challenging the assumptions and conventional wisdom that limit our thinking. Understanding the needs of our increasingly diverse student body demands fresh ideas and perspectives so that we make the best possible decisions for our community. If inclusive excellence is our goal, addressing the racial disparities in our administrative leadership must be part of the plan. I will launch a study of the hiring, professional development, and promotion practices that may contribute to the low representation of minority staff in managerial and executive roles carrying significant decision-making responsibility and authority. Led by the incoming Associate Dean of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, and working closely with Leslie Kirwan, Dean for Administration and Finance, Nina Zipser, Dean for Faculty Affairs, and Rakesh Khurana, Danoff Dean of Harvard College, the study will identify concrete steps we can take to increase racial diversity of senior staff and recommend near- and long-term hiring goals for the FAS. -- These initiatives are just a starting place. Our engagement in anti-racist action and the infusion of inclusive practices into all aspects of our teaching and research mission reflect a new sense of institutional responsibility and will require sustained effort over time. Just like the learning that takes place in our classrooms and labs, this work demands thoughtful attention, experimentation (not all of which will be successful), and patience and humility for when we get it wrong. No one person or institution (not even Harvard!) has all the answers, and we cannot achieve our goals without the courage to listen deeply and generously and to act with urgency, seriousness of purpose, and a mind towards continual growth. The work of racial justice is not a one-time project. We must be relentless, constructively critical, and action-oriented in our pursuit to build the thriving, more equitable FAS we all deserve. Even as I say that, I am clear-eyed that the work of real change will be difficult and for many it will be uncomfortable. Change is messy work. Institutional inertia will threaten to overwhelm even our best efforts. If we are to succeed, we must challenge a status quo that is comfortable and convenient for many. But I believe progress can be made and will be beneficial to all members of our community. Collectively, we are the authors of Harvard’s future. As we begin this historic year, I offer you my personal commitment to be a partner and ally in the work for equity and justice. And I urge you all to lean into the profound optimism that animates our mission and join your colleagues in building what will ultimately be a proud chapter in the long story of Harvard. Sincerely, Claudine ____________ Claudine Gay Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences #defundHarvard

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

And conservative postliberals who believe that value neutrality is a myth, a worldview will predominate any institution, & universities should return to their religious grounding. https://x.com/PatrickDeneen/status/1733900362996740121?s=20 19/n

@PatrickDeneen - Patrick Deneen

I respectfully disagree with my friend @McCormickProf. The lesson we should derive from recent events is that there is no value neutrality. Arguments that he now invokes were first used to replace the Christian basis of higher education (e.g. Princeton) with a progressive faith.

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

Where this goes from here is anyone's guess but I do know the implications for society & culture will be profound. 20/20 https://t.co/ycO3XOhP90

@MikeNayna — Michael Nayna

Posted - September 4, 2023 at 10:11 AM

Saved - September 5, 2023 at 1:45 AM

@MikeNayna - Michael Nayna

I've recently released a documentary series about this issue that covers a secret hoax project designed to reveal the problem. Here's part one. Check the link in my bio to view the rest. 4/4

Video Transcript AI Summary

Peter Bogosian, a philosophy professor, and James Lindsay, an author with a math background, are part of a movement that challenges what they see as problems within the university system. They criticize the methods used in studying racism and sexism, calling them flawed and based on opinions rather than social science. They argue that this flawed scholarship influences university policies and what students learn. The duo recruits a feminist historian named Helen and together they aim to expose the fraudulent nature of this scholarship by publishing papers in reputable journals. They discuss topics like social justice bodybuilding and suggest outrageous ideas to gain attention. Despite doubts, they believe their efforts will have an impact.

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Full Transcript

Speaker 0: Where would you like to be in? Speaker 1: Let's start with Peter and James. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: Tell me about them. Speaker 0: Peter Bogosian is a philosophy professor and James Lindsay is an author with a background in mathematics. Maddox. They're part of an intellectual movement that has begun pushing back at a problem they see inside the university system. Speaker 2: You know, you think, oh, these people are studying racism and sexism and okay. Somebody should be doing that and good. Then you start looking at it and they some crazy stuff. I mean, crazy stuff. Then you start looking at the methods that they're using, and and there's no It's just a bunch of opinions people are stringing together and and and they're pretending to be social scientists. Speaker 3: These people have manufactured their own corpus of literature and They published in these journals and they use that to credential themselves to sit at the adult table and have conversations that influence on policy, university policy, what an entire generation of students will learn. Microw records are real. Microw records are real. It's high Jack, our institutions, everybody's petrified of calling this out because they're they're afraid of being called a bigot or a racist or a homophobe. Well, I'm not afraid. Only a handful of people know about this because 1 leak destroys the whole thing. One single leak and we're we're buried. Our Speaker 2: And we're gonna publish these in tier 1 journals. So we're trying to go right to the source And say, look, the whole enterprise is bogus, and we're hoping that if we can get to the source and show that the scholarship that everything's coming out of is itself a fraud. Nobody has to listen to these people anymore. Speaker 3: It's hard to convey to people who are not in this world what an insane idea this I mean, literally, to de legitimize an entire body of scholarship upon University architecture is predicated, they give tens of thousands of actual degrees in this stuff, they have professors doing this, institutes. Do do you get that? We're going after all of Speaker 1: Recently, is indisputable. However, with its recent descent into postmodern discourse analysis and conceptions of societies entirely underlain by systems of white to undo much of the progress that has been made on racial equality. Using methods which assume racism to be present in any interaction a white person and a person of racial minority results in always finding it and further entrenching the belief in an ever present white supremacy. A a The job of the feminist is to detect it. Going through life, in order to detect ways in which men are belittling you, is unlikely to lead to female empowerment. Speaker 0: Peter and James recruited a 3rd author to their academic publishing spin, a feminist historian they referred to as the Oracle. Speaker 1: Hello, everybody. Speaker 0: Lovely to meet you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 4: Helen has a remarkable ability. When most people read something or try to learn something and they're like, what? This is bullshit. They'll just stop instantly. But not Helen. Helen will do something extraordinary. She will keep learning about it and keep reading it and keep digging down and it's absolutely remarkable. So why do you know so much about it, Speaker 5: but you're not of it? Speaker 1: Well, I had to study literary theory for several years as part of studying literature, but I just became interested And it's such a counterintuitive and sort of complicated on the surface, but underneath quite simple, ideology framework for belief and that's what's always interested me. I studied religion Because I was interested in how these very complex systems of thought, that are internally consistent, but need not actually have any basis in reality, how they can spread and how they can be used for different purposes and build on themselves and grow. And this is something that we're seeing with postmodernism and, sort of, its successors within sort of social justice. What what Speaker 4: are they building? What what is this thing? Because there's reams and reams and reams of scholarship. No. It's upside down world. There's reams and reams of this Stuff, what what is it? They are building a new culture and social they're building a new cultural and social reality And the goal is to foist that upon you. Speaker 2: It is. It's something like a cult or like a religion or Something that is based in, kind of, broken social science. And it's pretty full on. It's the truth. Speaker 4: They're religious fucking maniacs. Alright. So This is the foyer. Got a lot of China stuff. This is my wife's office and that's kind of her sacred place, so Don't go in there. This is the kitchen. That's Teddy. Here's the fridge. Help yourself. Recycling trash. No fat goes in the recycling. There's coffee every morning right there. Here's where we eat dinner every night. That's The table. Those are my my grandparents. They fled the Armenian massacre. We usually have a lot of Chinese people living here, so if you Run into them. They don't really speak English. Just say hello and wave and they'll wave back. Okay. Here's TV room. We have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon. On. You just put the TV on and just put what you want and it's you can figure it out. So my son is living in China now. You can have his bedroom. These are narrow stairs, be careful. This is my my daughter's room she makes me ring the bell every time I want to go in. In his room, in his bed, make yourself at home, There's this bed he got from Costco, very comfortable or, Kia, very comfortable. Speaker 0: Richard Baldwin is a retired professor who donated his identity to the project. This way, the team had real academic credentials to submit their papers with. Speaker 5: I was, bringing, speakers to the college. And so I chose him and I I wrote him and he agreed to do it and I got him there. And we just bought immediately because it was Like, we could tell each other everything. Yeah. I mean, we we trust each other for some reason from the the first time we met. It's like we hit We we sense in each other an honesty, belief in truth. And and, somehow, I almost felt like we had met in another lifetime. I it almost made me think of reincarnation because we clicked immediately. And so even after, he left after we had a great time. We've we kept in touch, and that was 3 years old. But we've kept in touch emailing or or, Speaker 1: Texting. Speaker 5: Texting, stuff like that. Speaker 6: He's clean. I'm not I'm I'm not one look at me and that would be an instant torpedo, and then they would know. And it was I couldn't manufacture a fake name or fake identity, and so he was perfect. And then I yeah, go ahead. And then I defriended him on Facebook, and I eliminated all Speaker 4: of our social media contacts so that no one would connect us. Speaker 0: They decided to start off by coming up with a research paper about social justice bodybuilding. Speaker 4: How about pornography? Yeah. We could talk about pornography for sure. Because if you Speaker 5: go online, you can find female bodybuilding porn. Speaker 6: I'll take I'll take your word for it. But That so that right there is a hook. Denise Muscino Speaker 5: is a former competitor. And she everybody in the bodybuilding world knows that She's done all that stuff. She tons of What's Speaker 4: your name? Speaker 5: Denise Masino. Speaker 6: Masino? Speaker 5: Masino. M a s s I n o, I think. Speaker 7: Oh, my holy shit. Oh, my gosh. Wow. She point Speaker 5: video set? See what I'm talking about? And she's got this enormous clit and and enormous, stuff from all those drugs. And it's like She's big. Speaker 7: Wow. That is just Extraordinary. Sir. Wow. That's All right. We're going to have to use her in this somehow. Speaker 6: Oh God. So Let's link fact studies in here somehow. Maybe we can make the claim that Female bodybuilders should be oh, god. That's fucking good. Female bodybuilders And there should be instead of, this unnatural Testosterone or whatever drugs, bovine growth hormone or whatever these people take. Maybe instead of that, they should Be, you know, Twinkies. So they'll be more egalitarian and then middle American women can participate in these Body physique shows to help with their self esteem. Now, that's a paper right there. Now, that Now, any rational person who would they would think that's just totally like that that's crazy. Like that's an absolutely insane idea. Speaker 8: The more ridiculous we can we can be, the more attention it'll get in the media. Bodybuilding is crazy. Brazilian jujitsu practitioners are all homosexuals and closeted and wanting to engage BDSM sex but can't. It's crazy. It also probably will end up in a decent journal. Speaker 4: Okay. Speaker 6: Mike, you look just Speaker 0: It's a lot. Speaker 6: Just incredulous and overwhelmed, and it's Just total disbelief. Speaker 0: It's just hard for me to believe that any of this is going to work. Speaker 3: Look, I guess you believe based upon the outcome. Right? That's what you believe.